OtherSide Entertainment lays off 18 from Thick as Thieves team
OtherSide Entertainment, a Boston-based game developer, has announced another significant round of layoffs, dismissing 18 employees from its Thick as Thieves development team. This marks the studio’s second major workforce reduction in just over a month, following the termination of 17 employees in early June after the cancellation of an internally codenamed project called Argos. Combined, these layoffs represent a loss of 36 employees in approximately one month, though the total remaining headcount at the studio remains undisclosed.
The studio attributed the layoffs to challenging market conditions for immersive simulation games, which are the studio’s core specialty. In a statement, OtherSide noted that its foundational DNA centers on immersive sim titles requiring lengthy development cycles—an approach that has become increasingly difficult to sustain commercially. The company stated that this game genre has become “an increasingly challenging space to occupy in recent years,” signaling broader industry pressures on the specific game category.
OtherSide Entertainment has faced significant setbacks in recent years. In 2023, Swedish gaming conglomerate Aonic invested substantially in the studio, a partnership that came shortly after Wizards of the Coast canceled a Dungeons & Dragons game in development. The studio’s ongoing project, Thick as Thieves, is a co-op immersive sim that had been a focus of development efforts. The repeated layoffs suggest mounting difficulties in sustaining the project or achieving commercial viability under current production constraints.
These layoffs reflect broader challenges within the game development industry, particularly for developers specializing in niche genres with extended development timelines.